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Sam Tân and Gay Parents.

The Anna Raccoon Archives

by Anna Raccoon on July 28, 2016

Not since Sam Tân stood in a whoopsie, which admittedly was only yesterday M’lud, a microscopic time in outrage land; has there been such a scramble to censor a so far unseen episode of ‘baby sitting for busy parents’.

Sam Tân, for the uninitiated, was the brainchild of two Kent firemen; they wanted to make films in an unintelligible language, where they could feature ‘illegible text’ to their hearts content. Naturally Sam Tân, or Fireman Sam, as you might know it, was made in Welsh…and broadcast on the minority S4C channel which specialises in broadcasting unintelligible Welsh. Not so much Andy Pandy, more Tonypandy.

One episode, first broadcast in 2014, was due to be reshown in a few days, when the ever alert Miqdaad Versi, assistant secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, who presumably had a backlog of Welsh language broadcasts to snooze through, noted what appeared to be ‘Surah Mulk (67), verses 13-26’ from the Koran written on a page of ‘illegible text’, which was one of a number of pages that appeared to be thrown up in the air before one page, not necessarily ‘that’ page, ended up under the foot of Sam Tân’s colleague, still gabbling away in unintelligible Welsh…

If you had been wondering why there hadn’t been mass ‘Not in my name‘ protests by the Muslim community about the despicable murder of an 86-year-old priest in Northern France, it is because they were all fully occupied, all 1,000 of them, writing to demand that this episode never be repeated. Not that any of them even noticed when they were glued to the original version in Welsh. As you would be. They have had their way, the Channel 5 is committed to burning, burying or whatever they do with material considered offensive by more than one person, the episode, and the animation studio has been fired.

In South Africa, there is another ‘pre-broadcast’ scandal. The Loud House is a fictional cartoon based around an 11-year-old boy. Sounds harmless enough.

‘It is, say the makers, rooted in the creative team’s own experiences from childhood and their observations today as parents themselves’.

There is one small problem here. ‘A creative team’ based in liberal Los Angeles, might, perchance, have a different definition of ‘family’ or ‘parents’ from your average church-going Christian South African looking for a cartoon on TV to keep their young son occupied while they do whatever church-going Christian South Africans do in their free time.

The Loud House turned out to have two characters depicting parents called, er, Howard and Harold. They lay claim to be the parents of the only black character in the show, young Clyde, who is the second in command to Lincoln, the 11-year-old main character. I would have thought this unusual depiction of the one and only black character as an ‘also-ran’ might have raised hackles, but that it seems is the least of the show’s problems. Gay parents! Arggh.

Consequently, in Africa, the whole of Africa, ‘cos it is too much hard work to adapt the series just for South Africa, Nickelodeon are going to make poor Clyde’s presence in the show even more of a mystery. The only black character – but ‘nobody mention his parents’!

“Nickelodeon has confirmed that an episode of The Loud House featuring two gay dads will not air on its channel in sub-Saharan Africa,” says VIMN Africa.

Not that anyone in Africa has actually seen the show yet. It’s never too early to complain.

These animation studios are positively subversive. A previous Nickelodeon effort was Bubble Guppies for your average pre-school tot, which featured a drag queen, and the animated cartoon ‘The Legend of Korra‘ which dwelt on a ‘gay’ kissing sequence as it explored ‘the boundaries of youth entertainment with respect to issues of race, gender, and sexual identity’.

Meanwhile the rolling news channels feature endless coverage of ‘suicidal Syrian youths’ making their ‘third suicide attempt’ that ‘just happen’ to be standing next to 15 entirely innocent citizens listening to music, as you do when trying to commit suicide for reasons which the BBC say ‘are unclear’.

Sky run a loop of online material featuring flashing blue lights in Munich and panicked citizens for over half an hour, while intoning ‘we don’t know what has happened, we don’t know who it has happened to, we don’t know who did what’ – but aren’t these blue lights exciting, and there may be some blood in a minute – stay tuned!

How is it that we can fret about our children catching a fleeting glance of two gay parents, or a page of the Koran falling to the ground – yet we have 24 hour a day coverage of appalling atrocities, beamed into every household, and not a murmur of complaint?

This follows from the burying of a 2001 episode of The Tweenies in reinforced concrete, as one of the puppets donned a blonde wig, cigar and said “now then now then” – a grand 21st Century BBC tradition. I understand Lord Hall-Hall is stepping up the policing of the BBC archive as the organisation mutates into the Ministry Of Truth before our very eyes, despite very little of it being ‘available’ anyway.

Only Allah is perfect Jim – and today you have spotted my deliberate mistake….thanks!

Interestingly, amongst the 270 jobs the Grauniad is shedding this week, are some 70 copy editors – we’ll soon see how good their writers are when they don’t have a nurse to mop up their misplaced apostrophes and split infinitives. Judging by some of the e-mails I have had from journalists – that even I can see the mistakes in, even I – most of them are dyslexic bludgers with no idea of how to use an atlas.

Not really related but that snippet reminded me of the time when I worked in a printers. I worked with the ‘real’ boss, i.e. the working boss. One day, the ‘real’ boss, the owner, who was the proof reader, came into ‘our’ office and threw down a magazine that we used to print for the ex-pats in various Commonwealth countries. “We’ve only gone and printed the bleeding map of New Zealand upside down!”. Needless to say, he was furious but the ‘working’ boss and I agreed that as it was he who was the proof reader, we felt absolved of our crime.

The Quran obsession begins young. I volunteered as a classroom assistant in a school that had 95% Muslim pupils, with a Class at Year 4 and another at Year 2. At the end of of the school year, we were taking down the decorations that had been put up for Eid, which consisted of the children’s handwritten pages of the Quran.

Some fell on the floor. I trod on one. A Year 4 (about nine years old) boy was outraged:

Him: You’re treading on the Quran! Me: Sorry, it was an accident. Him: But it’s the Quran! Me: It’s just a piece of paper. Him: But it’s the Quran! Me: And that is just a book.

I was never asked if I wanted to volunteer the following year… (possibly not related to that incident, but who knows?)

Apparently the BBC has been innundated with complaints about Fireman Sam, despite them not being the broadcaster of it. This says a lot for outrage-by-proxy, which of course manifests itself across the religious, social, and political spectrums.

There is no doubt that the Fireman Sam issue can be dealt with by the simple expedient of editing the original animation files, as was famously done with Peppa Pig to address the early episodes recklessness of travel without seat belts or cycle helmets. Two episodes, however, remain banned in Australia because they show Peppa and George being taught to be, a) not scared of, and b) kind to Mr Skinnylegs the Spider. Both laudible sentiments in the UK and Europe, but potentially more problematic lessons for children in Australia.

Meanwhile Ben and Holly’s Little Kingdom plays it safe by having every piece of text visible on screen being a variation on “Lorem ipsum…”

It is amazing and scary how the Establishment and its loony hangers-on will become outraged at things like Fireman Sam-gate. No doubt, the effect this pandering has is to make Muslims despise us even more. If the TV people issued a statement saying, “Get a life – this isn’t a Muslim country (yet)” the Muslims would probably respect us slightly for at least standing up for ourselves.

Compare and contrast with the broadcasting on BBC2 a decade ago of the blasphemous (and boring) anti-Christian ‘Jerry Springer, the Opera’ which attracted 50 or 60 thousand complaints, yet to my knowledge, no apology was even attempted.

As for the ‘gay’ stuff. It is subversive propaganda. To quote from today’s decision by the ‘Supreme Court’ in London about Scotland’s ‘Named Person’ state guardian scheme being illegal in its present form,

“The first thing that a totalitarian regime tries to do is to get at the children, to distance them from the subversive, varied influences of their families, and indoctrinate them in their rulers’ view of the world. Within limits, families must be left to bring up their children in their own way.” (Para. 73)

and the animation studio has been fired REALLY I mean REALLY ? Come off it…… its seems no more than an unconcious breach of Etiquette at the very worst and the outcome is that all previous work (and future livlihoods) are simply flushed down the pan? …..No it seems not breach of Etiquette but an unforgiveable sin though frankly should a deity exist I rather suspect (hope?) that he (or is that an unforgiveable breach of modern Etiquette for being sexist ?) might consider the greater sin the unjustness of the penalty inflicted in response to what I hope was no more than an inadvertant act . I mean no disrespect to any devout Muslim who might read this post and am certainly unqualified or justified in opining as to religious belief but a commentary (just one of many because of its centrality to Islam as I understand it) easily located on the web and which someone with some knowledge of the Koran would expect to find is The Importance of Justice The Quran, the sacred scripture of Islam, considers justice to be a supreme virtue. It is a basic objective of Islam to the degree that it stands next in order of priority to belief in God’s exclusive right to worship (Tawheed) and the truth of Muhammad’s prophethood. God declares in the Quran: “God commands justice and fair dealing…” (Quran 16:90) And in another passage: “O you who believe, be upright for God, and (be) bearers of witness with justice!…” (Quran 5:8). In Christianity of course there is the parable of the mote and the beam Therefore, one may conclude that justice is an obligation of Islam and injustice is forbidden. Christianity has similar notions with the parable of the mote and the beam

Back in , oh, 1988 or so, some bloke called Salamonellan Rushtea wrote an excruciatingly boring tome catchily entitled ‘The Satanic Verses’ which pretty much pissed off, or OFFENDED the entire Nation Of Islam. There were book burnings and ‘peaceful’ (as befits ‘The Religion Of Peace’ ) demonstrations in places as far flung from the British Isles as Bangladesh and Bolton. Which resulted in several booksellers refusing to stock it…obviously not realising that their buildings and staff were never in any kind of danger from proponents of Allahs compassion and love. But I don’t recall any of those book shops cancelling their contracts with the printers.

The British government spent an absolute fortune of all our monies keeping the author safe and I would contend that the average Brit (or other Western European) took the view that while Rushdie had deliberately gone out of his way to offend and that his writings were only slightly less boring than the Quran itself, his right to Freedom Of Expression was absolute and Muslims needed to ‘get over themselves’. OK, I’m sure there were a few on the left fringes of sanity who thought the British Government should ban the bloody book but , by and large, that was the reaction of ‘society’ I recall. What I would call ‘tolerant’.

Then Blair brought in the Fox Hunting Ban and The Smoking Ban and suddenly not only was it OK for Special Interest groups to be OFFENDED, they discovered that they only had to shout loudly enough and whatever OFFENDED their delicate little sensibilities would be BANNED, cast out, confined to the Outer Darkness were there is much gnashing of hunting pack dogs’ teeth, wailing of hounds and, shivering in the English ‘sunshine’ smokers.

In a way I’m surprised they had that jobs left in that department to shed, given traditional media cutbacks in recent years, and also seeing as the Guardian was never noted for huge verbal/gramatical accuracy (I think at one time, in a rare nod to self-deprecating humour, they ran a column featuring their own bloopers).

Staying with the topic of the Guardian, when he was writing about CSA issues in the mid 1990s to early 2000s, a veteran journalist with that newspaper made a passing reference to a former subeditor with the Daily Telegraph who was the son of a man who had held a senior parliamentary post.

Those who attempted to research this matter on social media in recent years mainly started off on the wrong footing from the get-go, not realising that a copy editor or subeditor of course is much more junior than an editorial writer, let alone an editor. ( I saw tweets asking ‘who was the former Telegraph editor who was accused of being a paedo’ and the like).

In fact, what is generally not realised is that (according to a reliable source) the former subeditor, and his father that used to hold the parliamentary post, were both mentioned in an articles in the MSM published in 2004.